smartguncleaning.com Equipment Care & Responsible Storage

Statistics

Workplace Protective Glove Use Statistics: What Surveys Show

Survey findings on glove use across Australian occupations, hand-injury events, chemical handling, cold work and selected agricultural and factory workplaces.

November 12, 2026 7 min read smartguncleaning.com Editorial Team

Contents

Workplace protective glove use statistics across Australian occupations

A 2014 Australian survey found that 1,710 of 4,878 respondents (35.1%) reported wearing gloves at work. That figure covers the survey’s respondents overall; it is not an estimate for every Australian worker or a measure of how often gloves were worn during a shift.

Latex was the most commonly reported glove type in the sample: 1,057 respondents (21.7% of all respondents) reported using latex gloves. Among those latex-glove users, 526 (49.8%) reported exposure to powdered latex gloves. Other reported types included leather (341 respondents, 7.0% of the full sample), nitrile (228, 4.7%), polyvinyl chloride or PVC (145, 3.0%) and vinyl (100, 2.1%). These categories should not be added to estimate unique glove users, because a person could report more than one type. Among respondents reporting any glove use, 784 (45.8%) said they wore latex gloves exclusively.

Rates differed across occupational groups. Among 124 carers, 93.6% reported any glove use, 77.4% latex gloves and 35.5% powdered latex gloves. For 272 nurse/medical workers, the corresponding figures were 96.3%, 61.0% and 22.8%. Food-preparation workers (n=150) reported 80.0% any glove use, 62.0% latex and 34.0% powdered latex; hairdressers (n=24) reported 83.3%, 75.0% and 41.7%. The groups’ differing sizes matter, especially for the small hairdresser sample. These are survey results from 2014, not current occupation-wide prevalence estimates.

Source: Latex glove use among health care workers in Australia.

Gloves worn at hand-injury events and during tasks

A case-crossover study interviewed workers with hand injuries at 23 occupational health clinics in New England between September 1997 and August 2000. Among 1,165 injured subjects with glove-use information, 225 (19.3%) said they were wearing gloves when injured, while 940 (80.7%) said they were not. Because the study group consisted of people who had already been injured, these percentages describe glove use at injury events; they do not show the risk of injury among all workers who did or did not wear gloves.

Reported task requirements were associated with whether gloves were worn at the event. Among injured subjects who said gloves were required for their task, 134 of 190 (70.5%) reported wearing them. Among those who said gloves were not required, 31 of 720 (4.3%) reported wearing gloves. Within the required-glove group, reported use at injury was 80.4% for food-handling subjects and 65.5% for machine operators; subgroup counts were not provided with these percentages.

Task-specific figures also varied. Among injured subjects, 46.6% of those cutting food wore gloves at the time of injury (118 cases), compared with 9.7% of those cutting nonfood items (165 cases). Gloves were reported in 19.6% of injuries during manual movement of objects (184 cases) and 34.4% during machine-assisted movement (32 cases). The study also reported glove use in 12.6% of machinery repair or unjamming injuries (95 cases). These contrasts describe different injury-task groups, not comparative injury rates or proof that a particular task caused glove use.

Source: Glove Use and the Relative Risk of Acute Hand Injury: A Case-Crossover Study.

Workplace protective glove use statistics for chemical handling in Japan

A questionnaire distributed in September and October 2015 covered 817 chemical-protective-glove users at seven Japanese manufacturing plants. Among these users, 70.5% reported handling organic solvents with chemical protective gloves; 28.9% reported acids and/or alkalis, 18.1% dust, and 10.3% carcinogenic substances. The categories may overlap, and the study population was already made up of glove users, so these figures do not represent the share of all manufacturing workers who used gloves.

Respondents cited use of chemical substances as a reason for deciding to wear chemical protective gloves in 46.5% of responses, a notice in the safety data sheet (SDS) in 29.8%, and management staff guidance in 21.4%. The survey also asked about knowledge and practices related to chemical hazards and glove selection. The grasp of chemical substances was reported by 70.1% of respondents, rising to 91.1% when “not applicable” responses were excluded. Skin-and-eye caution warnings were indicated by 69.5%, or 91.0% excluding not-applicable responses.

A more specific selection measure was less common: 25.2% reported obtaining permeation-test results for the target substance, or 38.4% after excluding not-applicable responses. The difference between the full-sample and applicable-response figures reflects the stated exclusion; it should not be read as a change over time or a separate population estimate.

Source: A survey on selection, use, maintenance, and management of chemical protective gloves at workplaces in Japan.

Glove wear duration, removal and replacement in cold workplaces

A workplace survey in seven companies studied 107 workers doing tasks in refrigerated environments. Fifty respondents reported wearing gloves for at least eight hours during the workday. Another 23 reported six to seven hours, 15 reported four to five hours, and 14 reported two to three hours. These counts describe reported daily wear duration in that specific cold-work sample.

Removal frequency and pair replacement are separate measures. Thirty-five respondents said they rarely removed gloves, defined in the survey as two to five times per shift; 32 said they removed them six to nine times per shift. For use of an individual pair, 65 respondents reported wearing the same pair for five days or more. That does not mean they wore the same pair continuously: the study separately recorded daily wear and removal.

When asked why gloves were replaced, respondents gave 81 tear-related responses, 40 for puncture, 29 for soaking and 27 for discomfort from moisture or sweat inside the glove. These are response counts, not percentages of workers, and may not correspond to mutually exclusive individuals. Together, they show the kinds of wear and comfort issues reported in the surveyed workplaces, without establishing how common each issue is across cold workplaces generally.

Source: Workplace Survey of Cold Protective Glove Aging.

Glove use in pesticide handling and edible-oil factories

A cross-sectional study collected data from 297 agricultural pesticide handlers in Samarahan, Sarawak, from January to March 2025. In that sample, 63.6% reported glove use. This is an item-specific uptake figure; it should not be treated as the percentage using all required protective equipment or as a national estimate for agricultural workers.

Two studies at Ethiopian edible-oil factories reported higher glove-use figures within their own production-worker samples. At the WA Edible Oil Factory in Debre Markos, 370 of 387 workers (95.60%) reported glove use in data collected in March and April 2024. At the PhiBela factory in Burie, West Gojjam, 371 of 389 workers (95.37%) reported glove use; that study was conducted in 2022 and published in 2025.

The factory results are close in percentage, but they come from separate sites and study periods. They cannot establish that edible-oil factory workers generally have higher glove use than pesticide handlers: the work, samples and study settings differ, and the studies do not provide a common comparison design.

Sources: Factors associated with personal protective equipment use among agricultural pesticide handlers in Samarahan, Sarawak, Malaysia: a cross-sectional study; Utilization of personal protective equipment and its key factors among WA oil factory workers in Debre Markos town, Ethiopia; Personal Protective Equipment Utilization and Determinant Factors Among Workers in Phibela Edible Oil Factory, West Gojjam, Ethiopia.

Glove provision and types in Australian wet-work workplaces

An Australian National Hazard Exposure Worker Surveillance survey conducted in 2008 asked about wet-work exposure and control measures. Among workers reporting wet-work exposure, 94% in accommodation, cafes and restaurants said gloves were provided, as did 88% in health and community services. In workplaces with fewer than five employees, 65% of wet-work-exposed workers reported glove provision. These results concern reported provision, which is distinct from whether gloves were worn consistently or suited to a particular hazard.

The report also described glove types among respondents who were provided gloves as a control measure for chemical exposure and answered the glove-type question. In that group, 41% reported disposable latex gloves, 29% rubber gloves and 17% leather gloves. The question’s base is narrower than all workers exposed to wet work, so these percentages should not be applied to that larger population.

Within the table’s manufacturing row (n=234), 26% reported disposable latex gloves, 36% rubber gloves and 26% leather gloves. For health and community services (n=416), 67% reported disposable latex gloves and 18% surgical latex gloves. These figures describe the types reported in the chemical-exposure control-measure group, not all gloves used in either industry.

Source: Wet work exposure and the provision of wet work control measures in Australian workplaces.

Sources

Written by

smartguncleaning.com Editorial Team

Editorial team

Independent editorial coverage of equipment care & responsible storage.

More to Explore

Statistics November 12, 2026

Home Organization Spending Statistics

Explore survey data on the organization products shoppers planned to buy in 2025, what people say they would pay, broader U.S. household spending, and organizing habits in the United States and 31 global markets.

8 min read Read article